Nixon has imposed a curfew as black protests continue, militarized "police" prowl the streets, and the Black Panthers call for resistance –and, no, we haven’t traveled in a time machine back to the turbulent Sixties. The Nixon in question is Jay Nixon, the liberal Democrat Governor of Missouri, where the black majority town of Ferguson is embroiled in a racially explosive conflict over the police murder of an 18-year-old African-American by a white police officer. And, no, it’s not those Black Panthers – who were long ago neutralized and destroyed by the FBI’s infamous Cointelpro program – it’s the New Black Panther Party, whose role is somewhat more ambiguous.

And yet if history never repeats itself exactly, it often comes pretty close. If we look at where we are today, the parallels with the 1960s, modern America’s time of troubles, are too numerous to be missed:

The return of the Cold War with Russia – The Sixties were defined in large part by the cold war, an era of anti-communist hysteria at home and endless US military interventions abroad.

The crimes of "Uncle Joe" Stalin – the mass murder of millions and
the imprisonment of many more in the Soviet gulag – had been blithely ignored
in the previous era, when he was our ally in the war against the Axis powers.
In the postwar era, however, with President Harry Truman at the helm, Washington
suddenly espied an existential threat to the West in the ramshackle Soviet empire.
That empire had been greatly expanded due to the war, and Soviet control of
Eastern Europe had actually been signed, sealed, and delivered into Moscow’s
hands by Franklin Roosevelt at Yalta. Yet that was conveniently overlooked as
the Cold War commenced with the Marshall Plan – a welfare program for devastated
Europe – and this was followed by a worldwide American effort to roll back the
Communist "threat." In the wake of World War II, a new enemy was needed
– and, not surprisingly, one was found.

Today the Russian "threat" is being touted by our political class as the latest in foreign policy fashion: from The New Republic, where Julia Ioffe recounts the supposed horrors of life under Czar Vladimir on an almost daily basis, to Fox News, where bleach-blonde "news" anchors have been breathlessly predicting a Russian invasion of Ukraine for the past three months, left and right march arm-in-arm in a new crusade against the Kremlin. Putin, they tell us, is a new Stalin, ruthlessly suppressing all domestic opposition and posing a threat to his neighbors.

How to explain this against the fact that Russia today is freer than it has
ever been in all its long history of autocracy? After all, the gulag is long
gone, the Communist party monopoly on state power is broken, multiparty elections
are regularly held, and antigovernment demonstrations in the streets of major
Russian cities are routine. Evidence of "Russian expansionism" is
limited to Putin’s reclaiming of Crimea – a territory incorporated into Russia
around the same time we took Texas from the Mexicans. So why the fanatic hatred
of the Russkies from our Washington know-it-alls?

The answer is to be found, in part, in Putin’s trenchant critique of US foreign
policy, post-9/11. In the run-up to the invasion and conquest of Iraq, the Russian
leader denounced the war plans of the Bush administration in no uncertain terms
– and from that moment on, US hostility toward Putin began to escalate. Neoconservatives
like Richard Perle demanded
Russia’s expulsion from the G-8 – and this brings us to another parallel with
the Sixties:

A futile and immoral war – or, rather, a series of such wars. The Sixties
brought us the paroxysm of Vietnam and a whole series of lower-level convulsions
in what was then called the Third World: standoffs with Russia and allied Communist
powers and local insurrections. Today the convulsive effects of our invasion
of Iraq are still being felt, both abroad and at home, even as we reenter that
arena, however reluctantly and halfheartedly. Iraq is only the most traumatic
such spasm, with Afghanistan a close second, as the US wages wars-by-drone and
by proxy across Africa and throughout the Middle East. And while the commies
are long gone and nearly forgotten, a new Global Threat has arisen to provide
gainful employment for a whole class of "expert" policy wonks, not
to mention the biggest armaments industry on earth: terrorism!

Speaking of which, this brings us to the third parallel with the Vietnam era:

We still have neocons! I would say "they’re back!" but in truth they never went away. That troublesome little sect that has infiltrated and influenced every administration since Richard Nixon is more influential than ever – this in spite of authoring the worst military disaster in American history. Born in the bowels of the New York "intellectuals" and the internecine ideological wars of obscure Trotskyist grouplets, the neoconservatives moved rightward over the course of decades so that by the time their hegira was over they found themselves ensconced as the brain trust of the GOP.

After leaving the fever swamps of the anti-Stalinist far left, they entered
the Democratic party and – via Max
Shachtman’s Social
Democrats, USA, grouplet – had an effect way out of proportion to their
actual numbers, embedding themselves in the trade union bureaucracy and eventually
coming to
outline the basic
policy parameters
of Lyndon Johnson’s "Great Society" as embodied in Shachtman’s proposed
"Freedom
Budget."

On the foreign policy front, the neocons weren’t your typical lefties, however: Shachtman, their ideological polestar, had defected from the Trotskyist camp after splitting with Trotsky over the nature of the Soviet Union and what attitude to take toward the outbreak of World War II. Since that time, he had evolved into what the Marxists used to denounce as a "social patriot," supporting the US side during the Korean war and eventually coming out in favor of Vietnam war. As the McGovern faction took temporary control of the Democrats, the "Scoop Jackson Democrats" – so-called because many of the leading figures in the movement were aides to Senator Henry Jackson (D-Boeing) – decamped from the party and proclaimed themselves Reagan Republicans.

The neocons’ post-9/11 role as the champions and cheerleaders of our rampage across the Middle East is too well known to be reiterated here: suffice to say that they’re not only still around but more vocal and powerful than ever. In the vanguard of the new cold war, they rail against "appeasement" and compare every effort to forge a more peaceful (and rational) foreign policy to yet another "Munich moment." They even bear the same damn names – Kristol, Podhoretz – and the family business is more profitable than ever.

Even more warlike and authoritarian than in previous eras, the neocons are
the biggest defenders of the Surveillance State: indeed, long before Edward
Snowden revealed the all-pervasive spying on Americans post-9/11, a veritable
blueprint for America’s emerging police state was presented in a 2004 book by
two paradigmatic neocons, David Frum and Richard Perle: An
End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror. The Frum-Perle duo prefigured
the complete elimination of the right of privacy and the destruction of the
Bill of Rights that was actually occurring even as they were writing:
in their book they averred that the government must maintain comprehensive records
on every US citizen, including "an individual’s credit history, his recent
movements, his immigration status and personal background, his age and sex,
and a hundred other pieces of information."

Yes, they’re back – although, unfortunately, they never went away to begin
with. To this day they defend all the worst aspects of the Sixties – the Vietnam
war, the domestic repression – playing a role in our era similar to the one
their forefathers did.

Oh yes, it’s undeniable, we’re having a Sixties moment – the forty-fifth anniversary of the Woodstock festival is upon us, following fast on the heels of the Ferguson police provocations riots. One almost expects to see Lyndon Baines Johnson on the telly revealing his gallbladder scar to a disgusted world.

One can hardly imagine a president more temperamentally opposite to Barack
Obama than the vulgar Texan: our present God-King would never lift his shirt
to show anything less attractive than awesome abs, and even then it’s hard to
imagine this cold fish dropping his reserve to that extent. Yet in every other
respect, the two Presidents are quite similar, both ideologically and in terms
of the larger context in which they operated. As
I wrote on Inauguration Day, 2009:

"I agree with Katrina vanden Heuvel, who fears Obama may come to resemble a more recent Democratic president: Lyndon Baines Johnson. He, too, gave us guns and butter. He also escalated and prosecuted an overseas war that was increasingly unpopular with the American people – and economically and morally damaging to the United States."

In that long ago column, I also wrote:

"In the age of Obama, what the late, great libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard dubbed the welfare-warfare state will take on gargantuan proportions, just as it did under LBJ, both at home and abroad. This is bad news on every front."

Yet there is good news: the backlash is coming. Indeed, it’s already here.
Some are calling it "the
libertarian moment," and it may be far more tumultuous than the storied
Sixties.

Rebellion is in the air. Not the confused, contradictory "revolution"
that the Sixties ushered in – and which produced the retro-politics we are witnessing
today – but a real insurrection against the power of the centralized State,
the monster that is killing and repressing people from Missouri to the Middle
East. As yesterday’s hippies exercise the reins of power and justify the wars
and overweening government that characterize our age, tomorrow’s rebels are
readying themselves for the battle to restore our old republic and destroy the
monster once and for all.

"While the specifics of the story-line are different, and many of the players have switched sides, what we’re seeing is the sixties scenario reenacted in all its essentials. Once again, the War Party is intent on launching – and, this time, winning – an unwinnable war in Asia. On the other hand, we have a Peace Party that sees the threat of a wider war poses to civil liberties at home, as well as our real interests abroad. Once again, the War Party charges the Peace Party with ‘treason,’ and raises the specter of state repression. The weird sense of déjà vu is heightened as all this takes place against the backdrop of an economic downturn and looming social and political upheaval. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it – this is an old aphorism that advocates of yet another invasion of the Asian landmass would do well to keep in mind."

Endless war, riots in the streets, economic and social turmoil that makes the
Sixties look like a Sunday school picnic – a new darkness is descending over
the nation, albeit with the promise of a silver lining this time around. As
one of my favorite political analysts once
put it: "Fasten your seat-belts – it’s going to be a bumpy night!"

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

You can check out my Twitter feed by going here.
But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often
made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.

201231808879 Responseshttp%3A%2F%2Foriginal.antiwar.com%2Fjustin%2F2014%2F08%2F17%2Fback-to-the-sixties%2FBack+to+the+Sixties2014-08-18+06%3A00%3A07Justin+Raimondohttp%3A%2F%2Foriginal.antiwar.com%2F%3Fp%3D2012318088 to “Back to the Sixties”

A capitalist system in terms of foreign policy would promote peace and stability in order for business to flourish…in my view. Who knows what those capitalists who are running our system are really up to.

Too bad the rest of the media doesn't realize that all this stuff is old stuff. Instead they live as if every day is a new day and there has never been any history. If those race-baiters can find some evil white vs. poor blacks story, they'll promote it to death at the expense of everything else. Hence, cops of any race killing non-blacks is a non-issue in America. And every article about Ferguson, including this one, has to make the point about the races of those involved. As if race or hatred were the problem. Folks get over this deception. That's not the problem. The problem is police acting like a paramilitary vigilante force acting out retribution, being trained to see civilians as the enemy, assume all to be guilty, assume they're all ready to kill a cop with any twitch of a muscle and then blow up the town. The rights of citizens have in effect been abolished. The governments–federal, state, and local–can and will kill you or torture you for any reason or no reason and they will get away with it.

So if someone wants to tackle the problem of race relations in America, fine, be my guest, while they're doing talks and sessions, the government is out there killing some family during a wrong address night raid, and if the family isn't black we'll never hear about it. But don't fall for the misdirection. There is a specific problem here that can be addressed and solved easily.

The capitalists like to say that…and they, well, lie like communists. Obama was put in office by War Street…LBJ was supported by Brown & Root…now part of Halliburton…a capitalist war piggy par excellence. 'Capitalism' in America today, is just a polite way to say 'Fascist'. War Street and its welfare queens would be belly up if it were not for the State…

These New York intellectuals…useless folk…servants of power…deceivers of the world…chattering, soulless priests of Mammon…these commies and neo-cons/neo-liberals… they are the heart and soul of the Republican/Democratic system of political gamesmanship in America today…they sell Cheerios and Slaughter…Police States and Corporate Work Camps… Free Trade, Poverty and Poverty Pimping…they sell the everything most people think about… they sell Fascism as Free Enterprise and Capitalism…they'll sell you heroin and disease and a pre-packaged ideology of whatever suits your fancy…If you buy into their myth of a peaceful capitalist utopia with little cherubic Ron Pauls singing its praises from the loathsome ceilings of its hideous cubicles…or light candles and sing its praises beneath your piece of tin in some Free Trade Capitalist Hole of Hell…then these intellectuals have done their job and you have swallowed the Blue Pill…washing it down with some flavor enhanced juice of the grape that they have told you is quite good…

Interesting article. The description of the neocons, tactics and goals is; however, too complicated – lets just call them Israel-Firsters – that covers it all. Also, I fail to see the "welfare" part of any present Warfare/Welfare state, unless we count corporate welfare or our handouts to the "suffering poor" on Wall Street.
Actually we are viewing the death throes of our present system of capitalism – a system that is concerned primarily with the betterment of the elites at the expense of everyone else. It is a repeat of the economic system practiced in late 18th Century France. Why the Libertarians want to defend that system is beyond my imagination.

Regardless of the excesses of the US media, including the internet, for or against Putin, there is no doubt that he is threatening Ukraine. By annexing Crimea, he violated Articles III and IV of the Helsinki Final Act. He has done nothing to distance himself from the rebels in Donetsk and Lugansk, who seem to want those provinces annexed to Russia as well, and nobody has ever provided an explanation of where the rebels are getting training and weapons, including heavy weapons, if it isn't from someone in Russia, whether the government or an oligarch/warlord. It should also not be forgotten that the Ukrainians themselves are innocent victims of Victoria Nuland's wrongdoing. They didn't overthrow their president, she did. Yet Putin is taking it out on the Ukrainians, probably because he doesn't dare stand up to the US. Bullies always pick on the little guy and, as we all learned in primary school, the only way to deal with a bully is to stand up to him.

So the editor is quite sure he is justified in using the unvarnished word "murder"? No space for an "alleged" or "suspected"? I was just about to donate but am reconsidering till I hear details of his conclusive evidence.

Noam Chomsky is occasionally insightful when it comes to politics, but he is profoundly ignorant on the subject of economics.

Capitalism, in its original Marxist sense, is nothing more than the use in production of privately-owned resources made available through deferred consumption. Plant corn instead of making beer out of it, the corn is functioning as capital. Do homework instead of playing video games, your time is functioning as capital. Capital and trade are the source of our economic prosperity.

The rise of the bourgeoisie in the eighteenth and nineteenth century terrified the aristocracy. Their institutional privileges were increasingly under challenge. To defend their privileges they hire court intellectuals to confuse the issue. For example, there are really only two social classes: those who pay the taxes, and those who decide how the taxes are spent. Marx’s job as court intellectual was to invent a new class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeois which was designed to draw attention away from the aristocracy and simultaneously strengthen it. That is, of course the game was rigged. But if you could confuse people about how the game was rigged, you would still win and they would still lose.

The central banks print money. They print lots of it. Yet people astoundingly refuse to consider this the reason the rich are getting richer while the rest of the economy stagnates. Instead they nurse thoroughly-confused notions of capitalism.

Deference to authority? Apart from Chomsky's role as gate keeper for respectable thought, what he calls "capitalism" I and others would call mercantilism or " crony capitalism" and I would agree with him to a certain extent. Assigning blame to "the system" rather than to a clearly visible clique is clearly the pose of an intellectual.

some phenomena always change and some never. basic THINKING that one person is better, more deserving, wiser, of greater value, than another hasn't changed on the political [nor cultic] level since first made into law some, say, 8 K years ago.
and about 98% of ballots cast goes to politicians who strive to maintaining just such a THINKING.
i'm not sure how many socialists in EU, russia, canada, US have also hallowed that ideology, but it seems to me that there is at least some such thinkers among the ranks of also socialists.

the 60's were too nice…sure the hippies took their lumps but they gave up after vietnam. they should have kept going and burned the whole entire corrupt corporate controlled edifice then when they had the chance. now it's our job to do this….revolutions can be peaceful or violent, but revolution is the only thing that will save us. as i've stated many times, every stinking neo-con republicrat needs a trial and to swing by a noose thereafter. the new theme song should be "cop killer", no more "get together" bs. the u.s. gov't has declared war on the citizenry, to den this is folly. fight back or be destroyed is the only option.

If the government is really as oppressive as you keyboard firebrands think it is, why hasn't it extrajudicially executed all of you keyboard firebrands, or at least jailed all of you on trumped-up charges?

Riiight, if only we could get rid of that nasty "clique", whoever in Areinnye they are, the Millennium would descend and we'd all get unicorn ponies!

Just like the Commies said if only we get rid of those nasty capitalists, the Millennium will descend, etc.

Just like the Ratzis said about that ethno-religious group they are notorious for hating.

Just like that formerly persecuted ethno-religious group says about the Palestinians.

It's not a particular group of humans, folks. IT'S HUMANS, PERIOD.

Sadly, it's our human nature to prey on other humans, especially those outside our tribe or tribe-equivalent, when we think we can get away with it.

We talking apes have both cooperative and competitive drives because at different times, both were useful for surviving, and perpetuating one's DNA, in the amoral, pitiless natural environment in which we evolved.

first of all it doesn't have to "jail" anyone, we're already in a jail. there is no rule of law to speak of, and the FACT of the matter is they can legally terminate any of us, you included, at any time without any reason, charges, or due process. THIS is tyranny no matter how you slice it. you can apologize and acquiesce to it all you want, deny it's "evil" if you must, but the fact remains you live in a totalitarian police state whether you choose to believe it or not. not to mention, it's all done by degree. 20 years ago there was no such thing as the patriot act, the ndaa, militarized police forces, permanent war, air port grope downs, etc. etc. but it's here now. so the question remains, how far does it go before we actually realize what's happening and so something about it? keep up your delusions…the oppressors love it.

You've been calling for revolution against a government which you say is utterly ruthless and can jail and/or kill you at any time. Why, then, does it let you live, and let you keep posting calls for revolution?

is it because up to now, 98% of all ballots cast goes to the representatives of the master class and its basic ideology that one person is of more value than another on political level.
and only more-valued people MUST rule the country, own the army, banks, MSM, CIA, FBI, police, judges, laws, constitution!
no wonder hedges, chomsky, moore, klein greenwald are as of yet alive.
besides, these people can be punished in many other ways.
and how many generals, cia/fbi agents they own?

What happened to suspending judgment and 'innocent till proved guilty'? And your evidence is what? Did you see the whole series of events? Use of the term 'pig' detracts from your statement as it says more about you than it does the officer.

Putin told the people of Lugansk and Donetsk NOT to go ahead with their referendum, were you asleep when he did that?
Putin did not overtly intervene when he could have easily, and still can, completely absorb the racist redneck Naz! entity of Ukraine, back into the fold of Mother Russia where it belongs. But why would he want it right now? This is an EU/US mess THEY made…let them foot the bill for it.
Russia didn't ask for this problem, Amerika made it her business to make it a problem. The junta in Ukraine is threatening Ukraine, the IMF debt-austerity is threatening Ukraine. Putin is keeping an eye on the Russian border, as Amerika would if China had destabilized the govt's. of Mexico and Canada and was pushing their puppets to join an offensive military alliance.
If you watch Putin's ACTIONS and not the bloviating of brainless Amerikan talking head bimbos with an agenda, you can CLEARLY see, even you, that Putin has tried to be reasonable and diplomatic at every turn of this manufactured "crisis" (Made in Amerika ™ ) yet the warmongers and their media whores paint it the exact opposite, so morons like you can call Russia a "bully." (We all know who the real bully is).

Putin's reasonable demands:
1) NO NATO in Ukraine
2) Federalization of the Republics threatened by Naz! Ukrainians
3) Russian re-instated as the 2nd language of Ukraine

All Putin does is stand up to the US, you must live in an alternate reality where Amerika is the good guy, overthrowing, civil-warring and droning people and nations everywhere Amerika doesn't like what the locals are up to, not Russia put your stupid head on straight already and if you are going to spew nonsense that is consistently voted down, at least try and be objective, instead of being the prime example of the effects of what long-term propaganda and dumbing down can do to a person.

"Murder", you are correct, does typically connote legal guilt.
There however seems to be some colloquial use when describing the killing of a child or unarmed person or apparent victim as having been murdered before a legal court decision has been made or the culprit found. "Apparent" murder victim with the apparent left out if thought too obvious.

Perhaps the word "slaying" could have been used without offending the doctrinaire legalists.
But I guess the author thought the slaying was obviously a murder, though he did not categorically say who is legally guilty.

[p.141] "The Huston Plan that was prepared for President Richard Nixon in June 1970 constituted a virtual charter for the use of intrusive and illegal techniques against American dissidents as well as foreign agents. Its principal author has testified, however, that during the drafting sessions with representatives of the FBI, CIA, NSA, and Defense Intelligence Agency, no one ever objected to any of the recommendations on the grounds that they involved illegal acts, nor was the legality or constitutionality of any of the recommendations ever discussed."

[p. 157] "On some occasions when agency officials did assume, or were told, that a program was illegal, they still permitted it to continue. They justified their conduct in some cases on the ground that the failure of 'the enemy' to play by the rules granted them the right to do likewise, and in other cases on the ground that the 'national security' permitted programs that would otherwise be illegal."

Libertarians are for limited government and free trade ala J.B. Say. Better that goods and services cross borders than armies. Libertarians can hardly be said to support the system when they oppose fiat money and state intervention in the economy. Welfare is intrinsic to the war economy giving spoils to the elite and buying off the populace.

Michael Brown was NOT handcuffed. YOU put the handcuffs on him in your mind, because you have already decided who is guilty, and the "handcuffs" make it that much easier. See how self-delusion works?

That said, Justin links to a twitter feed about two separate, unconnected eyewitnesses seeing the same shooting, and describing it the same way, which doesn't look good for the cop. But still NO HANDCUFFS.

The system keeps producing the climate for the growth of fascism and war. Chomsky makes the obvious point that to blame a political party or even a group of men ignores the system that bore those people. Maybe it's mercantile fascism. or whatever title you like but the results of fascist imperial capitalism are all to real.

You haven't hear of the abuses of power under the Richard Nixon administration, i.e. the Huston Plan?

Justin is right that this was "the police murder of an 18-year-old African-American by a white police officer" in Ferguson MO. Racism IS a serious problem when a white police officer assumes that he can get away with gunning down an unarmed 18-year old black man with his hands up. The coverup started immediately, and even the name of the officer who shot him was kept secret for several days. And then several days after the shooting, they come up with stories about the victim Michael Brown as a "suspect" in a robbery.

A 300 lb man, after robbing and assaulting an innocent businessman, is shot, and you immediately assume he is innocent? Isn't it possible the police officer was just protecting himself? No due process if someone's skin color is white, right?

There is an old witticism – no-one crosses a street to kick a dog. But let that dog really annoy someone and they will. In the same vein, this country no longer has the resources that it had in the 60s. When enough people realize that, a revolution becomes likely – even probable – and they will kill you for suggesting one.

It’s a curious fact that Marxist intellectuals are never actual members of the proletariat class for whom they claim to speak. Marx and the wealthy patrons who financed his well-above-average income for most of his life imagined themselves disaffected members of the intellectual elite who would be running things come the revolution. He married into Prussian aristocracy.

“In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.”—Marx, “German Ideology”

Yes, it is true what we know about the races of the involved. But why does an interracial killing automatically mean racism? I seriously doubt the victim was some saint as much as I doubt that the poor little cop was just defending himself and had absolutely no alternative but to empty half a clip into a guy.

Yes, there is very much doubt that "Putin is threatening Ukraine". How is he threatening? Sure there is an explanation of where the separatists get the weapons. From ex-Ukrainian military posts and from Ukrainian defectors. How is Putin "taking it out on the Ukrainians?" Isn't it rather that Poroshenko and the creep Yatsenyuk are taking it out on the Eastern populations? They are the ones dying here.

Let's see your evidence of who was "robbing and assaulting an innocent businessman." There was obviously a coverup from the start after a policeman shot and killed 18-year old Michael Brown. The police officer's name was not even released to the public for several days. When we finally get his name, Darren Wilson, his "friends" come out of the woodwork on callin shows and social media and we start hearing about how Michael Brown was a suspect in an "armed robbery" or cigers were stolen from a store, this story seems to change from time to time. I don't buy these and other lame attempts to blame the man, who was killed, the usual tactic if the killer doesn't have a case.

No, it does not "automatically mean racism." But in this case, racism does seem to be a factor, and this certainly should be part of the investigation. Also check out COINTELPRO with the Huston Plan in the Church Committee reports. I also posted this link in another post on this page. http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/pdfs94th/94755…

On October 28, 1969, Richard Nixon signed Executive Order #11490–Assigning Emergency Preparedness Functions to Federal Departments and Agencies, creating "continuity of government" in the event of a major disaster, war, etc. and a number of other EOs giving the federal government dictatorial power to control all communications, commerce and transportation in an emergency.

Also, on April 1, 1979, Jimmy Carter signed EO #12127 creating FEMA. Fast forward to today and you have the Patriot Act, the KGB, I mean DHS, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (eliminated Posse Comitatus), militarized police and a huge global war and murder machine. So yes, we are living in the North American version of the USSR.

Taco,
The problem with Libertarianism is that it doesn't address the malevolent forces presently using our capitalist system to trash our planet, exploit what should be the Commons, and create inhuman gaps between wealth and poverty. Libertarians have the naïve faith that the system is self-correcting; it is sadly not – not when you reach the level of corruption, monopoly, and
arrogance that the elites have taken us to. The "invisible hand" is robbing the cookie jar. We don't need a Rand Paul, we need a sheriff – a Dudley Dooright.

ask them not me. just because i haven't been murdered, doesn't mean the gov't isn't a ruthless, evil and totally corrupt enterprise. just ask the MILLIONS they have murdered and how that worked out for them. your logic is flawed and sounds like a german in 1936….well they haven't rounded me up, so what's the worry. at best your entire inference is an apology for evil. pathetic.

fine, no hand cuffs. i stand corrected. they still shot an unarmed man a minimum of 6 times by the latest coroner's report. so yeh, the pigs are doing just great. go google youtube and police brutality. you'll get about 7 million hits in about .35 seconds. the pigs are an out of control militarized goon squad doing the bidding of their washington/corporate masters. f*ck the pigs and all their supporters.

It's really important to keep black workers fighting against white workers. If working people ever quit fussing at each other and join forces to fight Wall Street and the rest of the war machine, that machine will quickly seize up.

Unfortunately Americans are extremely class unconscious. As a whole, we still believe we are just one lottery ticket away from a life of luxury. I sure hope we wake up soon…

[…] Nixon has imposed a curfew as black protests continue, militarized “police” prowl the streets, and the Black Panthers call for resistance –and, no, we haven’t traveled in a time machine back to the turbulent Sixties. The Nixon in question is Jay Nixon, the liberal Democrat Governor of Missouri, where the black majority town of Ferguson is embroiled in a racially explosive conflict over the police murder of an 18-year-old African-American by a white police officer. And, no, it’s not those Black Panthers – who were long ago neutralized and destroyed by the FBI’s infamous Cointelpro program – it’s the New Black Panther Party, whose role is somewhat more ambiguous. And yet if history never repeats itself exactly, it often comes pretty close. If we look at where we are today, the parallels with the 1960s, modern America’s time of troubles, are too numerous to be missed: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2014/08/17/back-to-the-sixties/ […]

If racism was involved in the killing of Michael Brown, if investigators are doing their job right, they can find the evidence. I do think that it is important to note that Brown was an African-AMERICAN. When an unarmed person is gunned down by the cops, with a coverup from the start, this is a threat to the life and liberty of all of us.

I entirely agree with your last sentence. Unfortunately, when race talk obfuscates the issue, then it doesn't become an issue that affects all of us anymore. It doesn't even become a matter of life and liberty but just race and alleged racism. I'm almost starting to think that the obsession about race on this issue (and everything else) by the media is precisely so the more serious issues of life, liberty, rights, and so on are ignored.

Yes, and I remember this "continuity of government" or parallel government plan from the Iran-Contra hearings. One of the committee members, I think it was Rep. Jack Brooks of Texas, asked Oliver North about this "continuity of government," which would suspend the US Constitution. The Chair Daniel Inouye politely told Brooks to shut up until they were in executive session.

You don't go far enough up the chain of command. Uncle Sam is not his own boss. He's Darth Vader. Capital, the finance and energy and "defense" corporations in particular, are Emperor Palpatine.

But while they are ruthless, evil, and corrupt, they don't seem to think full-scale massacre is necessary here, at least not yet. Perhaps they have decided that you keyboard firebrands are actually harmless?

Racism has always been very much a part of the broader issues of abuses of power, which are a threat to the life and liberty of all Americans. Racism was evident in COINTELPRO and the legacy of J. Edgar Hoover, and this pattern exists today in some cases. This does seem to be what is happening in Ferguson: http://news.antiwar.com/2014/08/19/ferguson-polic…

I don't know. Since America elected a black president thanks to plenty of votes by whites and based almost solely on the candidates race and not qualifications, the attempt to portray racism as America's greatest problem isn't all that convincing anymore.

Compared to people in other countries, Americans aren't all that class conscious but they are obsessed with race. While the class you find yourself in is something you can work on and change (at least in America), there's nothing you can do about race. And it's a superficial issue, just as Americans like it.

Your point is very important though. There is clearly an attempt by the establishment, as I would say, to keep Americans from becoming class conscious. Notice when someone brings up Wall Street crooks someone else invariable accuses the first of inciting class warfare. There is a class war already going on and it's against the middle class and poor, but if someone tries to point it out, he's accused of starting the war. Unfortunately, people fall into the traps, the biggest one which is to see each other and terms of race and nothing else.

this thread is vaporizing to the ether, but I'll admit that I miss Glass Steagall. I am just leery of state power. it seems that for every fix, the "market" works around it so in my book it's just another variable.

Look at the latest from peace-loving ISIL if you're really interested in what a " rampage across the Middle East" looks like. The evil US simply responded to al Qaeda's THIRD SUICIDE attack on it in just over three years, although not wisely by invading Iraq and deposing Saddam.

Amen. The "We want justice!" protesters became even more violent when that Michael Brown video was released, and the MSM is happily reporting the paid-for version of the autopsy that ignores the possibility that someone with his hands up would not be leaning toward a police officer unless he was charging at him. Marijuana in his system should also not have been reported according to the "justice" folks, nor should third-person statements supporting Darren Wilson's version of events. Looting and burning businesses is just regular old truth seeking to the people with nothing better to do than provoke law enforcement and then whine when they do the inevitable.
If Wilson's indicted, the trial will be another OJ circus.

Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative, and writes a monthly column for Chronicles. He is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000].